Shades of Northern Light

Canada is a young country as countries go. In 1965, Canada introduced its now familiar Maple Leaf flag. This flag was born out of great controversy and wrenchingly signaled Canada's modernity. The year we arrived, Canada's Social Insurance program was introduced and universal medical care was a new baby, just born. Canada’s Centennial was celebrated in 1967- the year after my family and I arrived, the year my twin daughters were born and the year I turned twenty-nine. Many important social and political changes were underway and the country was vibrating with new life.

Soon after we settled in, we discovered that James Shand Harvey, the man who in the early 1900s had surveyed the route for the first road and rail line through the part of Alberta where our home was located, was still alive. We could see that road from the back window of our house and hear the whistle of the trains as they moved down the line about a half-mile away. From the window of the hospital room where my daughters were born, we could see one of the lobstick trees that marked the path of the survey line.

I had the great pleasure to meet this early pioneer and hear something of his impressions of the land before it was opened to mixed farming, cattle ranching and oil exploration. As he became more comfortable with me, he spoke candidly about his worries for the land and its original peoples. He also wished that those who had been sacrificed to build the railroad could have their stories told, or at least be recognized in some official way. He meant it when he used the word "sacrificed". A number of men and animals died breaking the ground and laying the rails into and through the Rocky Mountains.

While Canada as a modern sovereign state is young, it is nevertheless quite old. If, as some argue, history exists in the telling of it, then Canada is very old indeed. The stories of Canada's past, and the adventures of those who have lived in it, precede its founding as a nation by many years, perhaps more than a millenium. This gives to the new nation a feeling of substance and stability. However, as with many other countries, Canada's pre-history can make modern life difficult. The ghosts of the past haunt us with their demands for recognition and recompense for past hurts. Like the spirit of a murdered woman in a haunted house, their souls will not rest until justice is dispensed. I know this is so. I have not only heard tales of these ghosts, I have seen them myself, and on occasion they have touched me.

The land and the economy at the time were hard and unforgiving. Many of the members of my parish had left a far different world to try and build a new life but the times were not right for many of them. Additionally, the aboriginal populations were probably at a low point in their struggle to live with the constant forced changes in their lives. It would be a few years yet before the native political movements would take shape and the elders would begin to lead some of their people back to more traditional values. The growing political activism and renewed respect for traditional values among native peoples, while somewhat contradictory in practical terms, would eventually bring many out of the dark place in which they found themselves. At that time, however, the future had little shape and the present offered few possibilities.

I was embarking on a journey where I would experience the extremes of a world in turmoil and where atrocities would take forms that many, at least in the western world, could not have previously imagined or had not bothered to notice. While most forms of cruelty perpetrated by human beings on each other are ancient in their origin, many people of comfort in the western world were experiencing the shock of first recognition. We were dismayed at the violation of innocents by priests, pornographers and cruel dictators. We were repelled by the shameless exploitation of the environment. We were confused by the persistent disruption of community life and especially the damage to our children. We were finding it increasingly hard to accept the destruction wreaked by mindless tribalism and the unthinking occupation strategies of conquering peoples. But perhaps the most difficult thing was coming to grips with the realization that these things were not the exclusive domain of third world countries or the plight of people in other cultures. These were our problems. The articles we were reading, the scandals we were hearing and the complaints we were receiving were arising from our own land and culture. It was our people who were the enemy.

So it was, that as my brother fought for his life in Vietnam, my family and I were embarking on a journey that would find us absorbed by the many human dramas emerging from a changing world. The fight of aboriginal people for justice and economic opportunity; the problems of criminal justice, in particular the treatment of prisoners; the support of political refugees including, at the time, draft dodgers from the United States; and, the education of disadvantaged children- all became part of our working agenda.